Dear Facebook, please stop trying to control my attention

Not that I'm threatening you or anything, I can assure you I won't be leaving you anytime soon. There is still too much inside you, for me to walk away. But the last few attention seeking features you've implemented are really pissing me off! I fully understand you are trying to get me to interact with others even more, but what you are doing will rather have the opposite affect. You have to find another way to get me involved, or the tab that you live in won't stay open for much longer.

The new red notifications next to the groups are very annoying (it seems I'm in a test group of some sort, since not everybody has them). Which UX mastermind sold you this great idea? It's becoming really hard for me to look at my Facebook homepage for the past few days, I've turned off all the notifications from groups and these things are still there, all red and intimidating. What are you trying to do, get me to click on each of them every day, or simply leave 'em all?

And the sound notifications you play each time I get a comment? I'm often listening to music or watching movies, and they're simply too much of an intrusion. Don't want that shit, I don't use chat because of these annoyances. You are making me wish not to receive any comments while I'm doing other things, which is absurd. The web was intended to be silent unless requested otherwise.

I try to keep positive with my blog, not complaining and bitching too much, but every now and then I just can't help myself. Things did change since you went public, the pressure from the investors must be enormous: more users, more friends, more members, more interactions, more everything. The graph is hungry. But you have to understand what's at stake: if we get too annoyed by what you're doing, we simply won't spend enough time with you to see all the banners you want us to see. Which can be a bigger problem than groups without active members or a few unnoticed comments. The service is the most important thing you have, and nothing good can come out of this new aggressiveness. Think about it.